Sales Call – 2010 Olympics
Feb 26, 2010 9:00 AM
What does it take to broadcast the Olympics? This special edition of Sales Call provides a sample. More information will be added as it is received by Radio magazine.
Lawo consoles and routers are being used by several broadcasters this year. Germany’s public broadcasters ARD and ZDF both have a control room in the International Broadcast Center (IBC) and a studio in the Mountain Broadcast Center (MBC) in Vancouver and Whistler respectively. In addition, it also broadcasts from the Deutsche Haus (the German national meeting point for athletes and guests from politics and society, economy and media).
Audio is mixed in ARD and ZDF’s Mobile Production Unit (MPE) on a Lawo mc290 in Vancouver and a Lawo mc256 in Whistler, fed to Mainz, and added to the broadcast output in the HD control room. A redundantly designed Nova73 HD serves as the router.
ARD radio has 50 staff members on-site. Also on the team is the Lawo equipment, consisting of an mc256 console, five crystal radio consoles, and additional equipment.
In a joint project between YLE, the Finnish broadcaster and SVT, the Swedish national broadcaster, all commentary and talkback signals are fed to Vancouver and Whistler, and then routed from there to YLE production units in Helsinki, where they are mixed before broadcast. YLE uses two Crystal consoles and one Zirkon in Vancouver and Whistler respectively, while SVT employs an mc266 in both locations.
Digigram 1.0 Iqoya V*mote audio-over-IP codecs with SIP software are being used by HRT, the national public broadcaster of the Republic of Croatia to cover the Winter Olympic Games. The codecs are being used by journalists for live contributions from the various Olympic sites in and around Vancouver back to the studios in Zagreb.
Olympic Broadcast Services Vancouver is using the AT4050 large diaphragm multi-pattern microphone and BP4025 X/Y stereo field recording microphone to create the 5.1 surround sound ambience. A large number of Audio-Technica shotgun microphones, including the BP4071L line + gradient condenser, are being used for outdoor and long-distance pickup in such sports as downhill skiing, figure skating and half-pipe sports. Custom A-T boundary mics are also being used for hockey.
Tieline Technology i-Mix G3 units are being used by the US television rights holder at the Winter Games in Vancouver to broadcast live IP audio from events.
ARD/ZDF (Germany), YLE (Finland), Avtoradio (Russia), NRK (Norway) and other broadcasters are using Mayah codecs such as the C11 audio codec, Sporty Reporter codec and the Centauri II for their productions during the Winter Olympics.
Riedel Communications supplied a complement of radio equipment and communications system for VANOC, the organizing committee of the Vancouver Games. More than 70 Artist digital matrix intercom systems and 10,000 digital radios are were used at the Vancouver games. In addition several international right holding broadcasters such as NRK (Norway), the BBC (UK) and ZDF (Germany) utilized Riedel’s intercom systems.
